Musical umbrella by Berlin-based hackers

TWO Berlin-based hackers Alice Zappe and Julia Lager create a musical umbrella that produces a random series of lo-fi 8-bit tones. How does this umbrella work? Well, it's simple. When raindrops strike the outside surface of the umbrella canopy, they are converted to tones by the the presence of twelve piezo pickup sensors which are taped to the underside of the umbrella and respond to vibration. The piezo’s are then fed into an Arduino Uno - an inexpensive and open source micro-controller popular with hackers and hobbyists, which is in turn connected to two speakers.